1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for editing an electronic document and, more particularly, to a technique for eliminating inconsistencies between objects and page attributes included in an electronic document.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a document editing system, a technique for appending, as a page attribute, a watermark such as “SECRET” or “NO COPY” to pages that form a document to be processed is known. Also, a technique which allows a document to hold a plurality of page attributes, and selectively appends different page attributes for respective pages is similarly known. On the other hand, in an identical document editing system, a technique for extracting information of each rendering object (for example: a character, character string, or image) in each page that forms a document to be edited, and executing various editing processes (for example: move, delete, and copy) is known. It is desirable for the user to be able to use the aforementioned two techniques in a workflow series, and it is a common practice to implement these techniques in a single document editing system.
In general, since each page attribute and each rendering object in a page are individually managed, the editing process of the rendering object is not synchronized with the page attribute. For this reason, the set page attribute often becomes insignificant depending on the editing contents of the rendering object. For example, when a page attribute “SECRET” is set, but a rendering object which is set as a secret information target is deleted, a page does not include any object as the secret information target although the page attribute “SECRET” is set. Hence, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-260136 (patent reference 1) has proposed a technique for appending a corresponding page attribute to a page that includes a keyword (for example, a character string “SECRET”) of a rendering object by associating the keyword with the page attribute.
However, at the time of use of the technique of patent reference 1, when a page has different page attributes before and after the editing process, a new page attribute is unwantedly additionally appended to an existing rendering object to which a page attribute need not be originally appended. That is, since rendering objects and page attributes are independently managed, an attribute can only be moved for each page.
FIG. 36 depicts the aforementioned problem. Reference numeral 3601 denotes a page; 3602, a page attribute (watermark); and 3603 and 3604, rendering objects. When the rendering object 3604 is moved from the second page to the first page, as denoted by reference numeral 3605, the page attribute (watermark) set in the second page is set as that of the first page as a move destination, as denoted by reference numeral 3606. For this reason, the setting of the page attribute (in case of FIG. 36, “SECRET” enclosed in a circle) is unwantedly reflected to a rendering object 3607 originally included in the first page.